


Torchlight

by hyacinth_sky747



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyacinth_sky747/pseuds/hyacinth_sky747
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is back after three years of being dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torchlight

Sherlock walked into John’s office wearing denims and a hoodie. The hood was pulled up though it wasn’t raining outside and he was wearing dark sunglasses though it was cloudy. It was Sunday. John’s office was not open for business so Sherlock knew he’d find him alone. He’d been tailing John for two days, waiting for this opportunity to speak with him. 

John looked smaller than Sherlock remembered him. He leaned on a cane when he walked and there was more grey in his hair. The office was dim. John hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights or take off his coat. He was shuffling patient files into a case. He wasn’t staying long then. Sherlock pushed open the door. 

“May I help you?” John was always polite but his voice was clipped, hurried, suppressing irritation. 

“Hello, John.”

“I’m not actually open today. Can you—“

Sherlock pushed back his hood and took off his glasses. John froze. His mouth fell open as if he was gasping for air. His face went white and the file he was holding fell from his hands. Sherlock hurried forward as John’s eyes rolled back in his head and his knees gave out. He was able to stop his friend from cracking his head on the corner of the desk. He eased them both to the floor and held John’s head in his lap. Sherlock sighed. He’d waited so long for this moment, longed for years to have John by his side again. He shook John gently and called his name. 

After a few moments John’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled sweetly up at Sherlock. 

“You’re a ghost?”

“No.”

“It’s really you?”

“Yes.”

“How? Why?”

“I was never dead, obliviously. I couldn’t tell you. It wasn’t safe. But I’ve tracked down all of Moriarty’s people now. I’m back.” Sherlock began to explain in detail. How Mycroft helped him get away. How he’d been on the move for the past three years, in danger. How he’d done it for John’s own good. 

John’s face hardened and he pushed himself into a sitting position and scrambled away from Sherlock, leaning back against his desk with his knees drawn up. 

“You let me believe you were dead?”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t—“

“I eulogized you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I read your blog. Mycroft kept an eye on you for me. They were kind words. Thank you.”

John pushed himself up. He wobbled a bit on his feet and Sherlock scrambled up to help him but John moved angrily away and grabbed his cane. 

“I don’t have time for this. I have to go.” John’s voice was dazed and he began shoving files into his case haphazardly. “You probably know I got married.”

“Yes.”

“Then you know she’s dying. My wife. She’s _actually_ dying, Sherlock. She has a few days left.”

“I know, yes.” 

“Right,” John said. He closed the case and turned to leave. “Show yourself out. You’re good at that.” 

“John.”

John stopped but he didn’t turn around. 

“I’m at Baker Street if you need—“

“If I need anything? From you? I needed you three years ago, Sherlock. You know, I used to hope it was something like this. I used to hope you’d wake me up one night and whisper how it was all a game. I used to think I saw you in shops and behind trees. But I stopped hoping for it a long time ago. I stopped needing you.”

John left then and Sherlock took several deep breaths to calm himself. He knew John might feel angry and betrayed. He didn’t expect him to be so cold. He didn’t expect to be left with trembling hands and a tight throat. 

He gave John a few moments to put some distance between them and then left himself. He got as far as the waiting area. John was back. His eyes were red and his jaw was set and his hands were clenched into fists by his sides. Sherlock put his own hands in his pockets. He wouldn’t stop John. He’d let John punch him or kick him or strangle him. 

John threw his case and cane to the ground and pushed Sherlock so that he staggered. 

“Fight back!”

Sherlock didn’t. He let John push him again and again until he was pushed against the wall. 

“Fight back, damn you!” 

“No, John. Do what you need to. I deserve it.”

“Why now? Why today? I’m in the middle of watching my wife die.”

“You sold your flat.”

“So?”

“You didn’t buy another one. You didn’t rent one. You gave the money to charity. You’re not planning on living anywhere after this is all over.”

John’s face crumpled and he bowed his head. His hands dropped from Sherlock’s shoulders to clench in fists again at his side. 

“I missed you,” Sherlock whispered. 

John’s strength left him then. He leaned his forehead against Sherlock’s chest. He was sobbing like he’d been punched in the gut, like there were great screams in him that he hadn’t the strength to get out. Sherlock pulled him close and held him there until John got his breath and the sobs turned stormy and loud and he held him after when he was hiccupping and rubbing his nose on Sherlock’s clothes. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You haven’t cried since she got sick, have you? You’ve been being brave and steady for her.” 

“I’m a fucking mess. I’m late. I have to get back to Mary.” 

“I know.”

John didn’t move except to unzip Sherlock’s hoodie and lean his cheek against the clean, dry shirt underneath. 

“This is my jumper. You’re wearing my jumper. I thought I’d lost it.” The jumper fit Sherlock. It shouldn’t have. It should have been too short in the arms. Sherlock had lost weight. The jumper hung from his shoulders and the sleeves were long enough to poke out from under the hoodie. This should have made John ache but he couldn’t ache anymore than he already did. It was like standing in the rain, after awhile you couldn’t get any wetter. John’s soul was soaked in sorrow. 

“I just needed one thing of yours. I had photographs but—this smelled like you. You can have it back.” 

John leaned away to look up at Sherlock. He put his hands on Sherlock’s face. 

“It’s really you? It’s not a dream?”

“It’s really me. I’m so sorry, John.”

John just nodded. “Come to the calling hours. I have to go.”

He really did leave then. Sherlock slid down the wall and stayed there until he was sure his feet would hold him again. 

~*~

He went to John’s flat and broke in. There were boxes everywhere. They were neatly labeled and neatly packed. John wouldn’t leave a mess behind for anyone to deal with. It only took Sherlock a few minutes to find the gun. He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers and left. 

~*~

Baker Street was just how he remembered it. All his things were there. It even smelled the same. Only John’s bedroom was different. The bed was stripped and his few personal belongings were gone. Sherlock opened the wardrobe and took out the duvet and sheets that John used to sleep on. They’d been laundered. They didn’t smell like him anymore but Sherlock put them on the bed anyway and lay down. 

He felt as if he hadn’t slept in three years. Here, in John’s room, with John’s jumper, and John’s sheets, and John’s unloaded gun in his hand he could finally, finally sleep.

~*~

Sherlock sat in the very back of the church. John limped to the altar to deliver the eulogy. He looked very small and grey and his voice shook but he didn’t cry. Everyone listening to him did. They were sweet words from a sweet man who’d lost his sweetheart far too soon. Almost everyone. Sherlock didn’t cry. He’d be as strong as John. 

Afterwards Mary’s sister had everyone back to her flat for lunch. Mycroft and Lestrade went. Sherlock sat in a coffee shop across the street and watched the door. He didn’t have to wait long. After twenty minutes John came out looking wild-eyed and desperate. Sherlock hurried across the street.

“I don’t know what to do now. I don’t—I was going to—I had a plan but now you’re here and—“

“I took your gun.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want it?”

“I don’t know.”

Sherlock hailed a taxi. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

~*~

John slept a lot that first week. Sometimes he woke up and Mrs. Hudson was sitting by his bedside. She would coo and fuss over him and make him eat. Sometimes it was Lestrade or Sarah and once it was Mycroft. John liked it best when Sherlock was there. Sherlock didn’t fuss or try to cheer John up. He knew his friends were keeping a suicide watch and as the days wore on and he slept less the attention began to embarrass him. 

“You can tell them I’m okay. They don’t have to come here.”

“Do you want your gun back?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. Keep it for a little bit longer.” 

John woke early on a Sunday to find Sherlock sprawled in the bed next to him. He was still dressed but disheveled and a trickle of blood was running out from under his hairline. John slipped quietly from the bed to get the first aid kit. Sherlock didn’t wake. Sometimes, after he’d been up for days, it was nearly impossible to wake him. John remembered that. He remembered nagging Sherlock to eat and sleep and wondered how Sherlock had survived the last three years without him. He used to wonder how Sherlock had survived all the years before they became flat mates. Perhaps Sherlock didn’t need John as much as John once thought he did. 

Well, he’d clean up this mess at any rate. John liked to feel needed, useful, even for so small a thing as a minor head wound. Sherlock was good at pretending. He pretended to need John to keep him sane and alive. He pretended to need help with the rent. He pretended to need help with cases. He pretended to die. 

Why though? Sherlock wasn’t kind. He hadn’t done those things because John was a fellow human being in need. Sherlock didn’t feel pity. 

John finished cleaning the wound and put a plaster over it with cartoon characters on. Sherlock had always liked those. 

“That’s you sorted.” John put a kiss over the plaster. Sherlock had always liked that too. “You hurt anywhere else?”

Sherlock couldn’t answer so John went exploring, feeling behind Sherlock’s sleeping head, rolling up his trousers to his knees, and pushing up his sleeves. Finally he unbuttoned Sherlock’s shirt. There weren’t any bruises there, no cuts or scrapes or gaping wounds. There was just Sherlock’s pale chest rising and falling with even, living breaths and John bent his head down to feel them, listen to them. He let his head rise and fall with the tide of Sherlock’s breathing.

Later, Sherlock woke with John’s head still nestled against his bare chest. He should have moved him. He needed to check his email and his laptop was downstairs. He didn’t. He stared at the ceiling and he wasn’t bored. His heart was beating too fast. He put his hand on John’s shoulder and thought of the cold, lonely winter he’d spent in Moscow. He thought about Rio and Boston and all the other places he’d been in last three years. He thought about how everywhere he went he always turned to tell John something, ask him something, point something out to him, before he remembered that John wasn’t there. John was safe in London. John wasn’t his anymore. 

~*~

John couldn’t give up the cane. He’d carry it and run in an emergency but he always went back to it. Long walks tired him and left him irritable. Sherlock tried again and again to trick him out of the habit but it never worked so, after three or four weeks, he stopped. 

He’d used the gun again. John had followed Sherlock into a particularly dangerous confrontation. Sherlock had tried to leave John behind. He didn’t want John there. He’d spent too long trying to keep John alive to put him in danger now. But they’d been in a tight corner and Sherlock had pressed the gun into John’s hands. 

“I can’t do it,” Sherlock said. He couldn’t. His hands were shaking with adrenalin. John didn’t hesitate. He aimed for the man’s shoulder and hit it. John always aimed for the shoulder. He put the gun in his waistband and kept it until they got home. 

In the living room he took it out and set it on the coffee table. He looked at it for a long time before unloading it and cleaning it. He put it back on the table and nodded toward it. 

“That’s yours.”

Sherlock scooped it up.

“I’ll keep it for you.”

“No. I’ll use it if you need me to but I don’t want it. It’s too easy. It’s too quick and easy. It’s an easy way out. Keep it.”

“You don’t trust yourself.”

John shrugged. “I miss her. Most days I don’t believe you’re really alive. Sometimes I want to hurt myself to make sure I’m not really dead. It shouldn’t be so easy to end it all. You should have to be brave. You’d deserve a bit of pain.” 

Sherlock winced. He had killed himself. John wanted him to feel pain. Sherlock did. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t in pain. 

“You have pain, John. That’s why you’d—want to.”

“I don’t want to. Keep it.”

Sherlock tucked the gun away where John would never find it. One day he wouldn’t need to. One day John would come back to him. 

~*~

It was late at night. Sherlock had black and blue finger prints on his neck from where he’d nearly been strangled to death. The knuckles of John’s left hand were split open and his ankle was sprained. They helped each other up the stairs. They fell on the couch in a heap, gasping for breath. 

“I’m sleeping here. No more stairs,” John said. His head was on Sherlock’s chest and Sherlock breathed deep though it made his ribs hurt. He watched John’s head rise and fall with his breathing. 

“I didn’t think it would be so dangerous this time. I wouldn’t have brought you.”

“Lucky for you that you did.” 

“You thought I was dead.”

“Again,” John agreed. 

“You kissed me.”

John was quiet for a long time. It didn’t matter. They were home. They were safe. They were together. The case was solved. Everything was as it should be and a kiss was just a kiss. 

“I’ve never loved another man like I love you.” John’s voice shook and he took in a deep ragged breath. “I’m terrible for saying this. She’s only been dead two months. The thing is-- I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.” 

John picked his head up and turned his face to look at Sherlock. His eyes were bright and red. Sherlock thought about his first day back, in John’s office. John swallowing and swallowing his tears, his fingers clenched into fists of rage. 

John’s hands were soft now. His fingers were all unfurled as he placed them on Sherlock’s cheek. His lips were gentle as kissed Sherlock’s lips.

It was the sweetest kind of insanity. Sherlock forgot everything. He didn’t want for anything. He didn’t feel his pain. He didn’t even feel any urgency to take things further. He just wanted the kiss. He wanted it to last forever. 

Forever was not possible. No one got forever. 

He pushed John gently away.

“This is grief, John. This is shock.” 

“No. I’ve had those. This is something else.”

“What do you think it is? Love?”

“Yes.” 

“It’s not. You need comfort. I need comfort. We need to sleep. We’ll be better in the morning.”

“You’re afraid. You’re afraid of love,” John whispered. His fingers were still on Sherlock’s cheek. 

Sherlock disentangled himself from John gently and stood. He wrapped his arms around himself and wished desperately for a cigarette. John wasn’t a genius but he had an infallible instinct. It was something John often ignored, to his detriment. It was instinct that told John that Sherlock hadn’t really died, that left him looking too hard at shadows and waiting for a voice in the night. 

“Love left you longing for a bullet in your brain.”

“No. It was the loss of it. And it was love that kept it out. Your love. You don’t have to kiss me, Sherlock, but you do love me.”

Sherlock didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. John was being obvious. 

“Fine. Pretend if you need to. Pretend you’re dead. That you don’t have a heart. Maybe you don’t. I could never do what you did. I couldn’t willfully leave you. That’s why I don’t want the gun. It would hurt too much.”

John turned to go. He was at the door when Sherlock finally got the breath to speak. 

“You think it didn’t hurt?”

John paused. He hung his head.

“Did it?”

“Why do you always get to be the one who’s noble and self-sacrificing? You hold on to me no matter how much it hurts you. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to let you go? On purpose? To keep you safe? Leaving you behind is like turning out a torchlight in a dark house. It’s comfort, it lets me think, it keeps me brave, it lets me find my way and without you--. It hurt, John.”

Sherlock was breathing hard. His ribs ached and his head swam. 

“You want to kiss me because you want to hold on to me. I can’t kiss you. I won’t be able to let you go. One of us has to be able to let go.” 

John was silent for a moment. Motionless. His jaw was clenched and his throat worked hard. When he got himself under control he limped across the room and grabbed his bag.

“Sit down. I need to tape up your ribs.” He kicked out a kitchen chair for Sherlock to sit in and Sherlock stumbled over to it. He felt strange. Worn out, but clean, as if he had cried and cried. 

John listened to his breathing and taped up his ribs with cool efficiency. He was tender, but he touched Sherlock with a doctor’s hands, not those of a friend or a lover. 

“It’s not easy for you at all is it? This caring lark? Ignoring it? It’s not an easy road to travel, Sherlock. There’s pain on it. But you always have a torchlight.” John finished taping up Sherlock’s ribs and put a kiss on Sherlock’s warm chest, just over his heart. “You can’t let me go. I’m holding on too tight.” John put his fingers in Sherlock’s hair. “Sherlock? You’re holding on too. You’re holding on to me so tightly you can’t see that I’m alright. Sleep well.”

John rose stiffly to his feet and limped from the room. Sherlock listened to his halting steps on the stairs and listened to the muffled sound of John’s bedroom door closing. He sat in the chair for a long while. He sat until he realized his hands were numb from being clenched too tightly. 

~*~  
Two nights later Sherlock stood at the door fiddling with his gloves. He wanted to shove John into his coat. He wanted the two of them to run out together into the night. 

“Don’t follow me. I—can’t.”

John stepped close and knotted Sherlock’s scarf around his neck. He pulled on the lapels of Sherlock’s coat. 

“I do know what it’s like to let you go. I let you go all the time. It scares me but if I kept you here I’d kill what I love about you.” 

“I’m killing you?”

John smiled. He pulled Sherlock down and kissed his cheek. 

“Go be brilliant. Wake me up when you get home.”

~*~

“Sherlock? Be nice?”

“Nice is boring.”

“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want you to create an international incident. Don’t start a war with the Americans. We’ve been on good terms with them for awhile.”

“I’ll do what I need to do.”

Lestrade winced but John smiled. 

“It’s quite the compliment, Sherlock. Lestrade thinks you can single handedly undo years of good international relations.” John zipped up Sherlock’s suitcase and his smile faltered momentarily until he plastered it back on. It was false and ghoulish and Sherlock shivered at the sight of it. 

John put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and stood on tiptoe to kiss Sherlock’s cheek. He didn’t care if Lestrade saw. John had been allowed to kiss Sherlock goodbye ever since the night he’d taped Sherlock’s ribs. He wasn’t going to stop now, not when Sherlock was going so very far away. John always felt a frisson dread that he wouldn’t return. 

“I’ll miss you.”

“You’ll get sick of me. You’re coming with.” 

“I am?”

“Sherlock the expense—“

“I’ve bought the ticket myself, Lestrade. And I moved us out of that cheap motel you booked me into. Honestly, one can’t think with roaches running amuck. I found us a nice little inn.”

“An inn?” John said.

“Yes, pack your case, John. The flight leaves in an hour.”

“Why am I coming with? You said it’d be dangerous.”

“Torchlight, John.”

John smiled. He turned to put himself between Sherlock and Lestrade. This moment should be private, though John didn’t really care if the whole world was watching. 

“How many rooms did you book at the inn?”

“One. For a week. I think we can solve the case in a couple of days, avoid starting any wars, you know how I hate traffic, get married, and start our honeymoon. Or is that moving too fast for you?”

John forgot Lestrade even existed. Sherlock’s lips were too warm under his lips to leave any thought for Detective Inspectors. 

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” John heard Lestrade mumble. There was the sound of ripping paper and then Lestrade was flinging the pieces at them.

“Confetti. Off you go. This has international incident written all over it.” He pulled at John’s elbow. “Can you imagine the crime scenes after Donovan and Anderson find out about you two?” 

“Yeah. No! God no!” 

Sherlock pushed John off to pack. John shoved things into his case and reentered the living room in time to see Lestrade pressing condoms into Sherlock’s hand. 

“It’s so you don’t get him pregnant. I don’t want any more of you running around.” 

~*~

Sherlock didn’t get John pregnant. Though not for lack of trying.

No one got forever. Sherlock wouldn’t get it and neither would John. This would only end in tears for one of them. Some day. In the meantime Sherlock thought he’d like to fill up his bit of forever with John trembling beneath him. He’d like to do that as often as possible. He’d like to make a study of John’s naked skin in lamplight and firelight and sunlight and moonlight. 

One day grief would find them again. Someone would be left with only memories. They owed it to each other to make those memories brilliant. Some day the memories would be all one of them had to hold on to.


End file.
